          README.TXT  --  Instructions on how to run the replication files for:
     
Behavioral Impediments to Valuing Annuities: Complexity and Choice Bracketing
     to be published in the Review of Economics and Statistics in 2020
                              by
         Jeffrey R. Brown, Arie Kapteyn, Erzo F.P. Luttmer, 
                Olivia S. Mitchell, and Anya Samek
                
 
 
1. The replication files are:

   annuityanalyses.do   -- Stata program that runs all the replications   UAS49_WithoutID.dta  -- Stata data file with variables from wave 49 of the 
                           Understanding America Study (UAS). The UAS is administered 
                           by the University of Southern California. The UAS wave 49 
                           data is augmented with select variables from other waves of 
                           of the UAS. Variables such as UasID, state of residence, 
                           and other variables that could help identify the respondents
                           are suppressed.
                           
                           IMPORTANT: If you use this UAS data, kindly email your 
                                      full name and affiliation to uas-l@usc.edu 
                                      so that the administrators of the Understanding 
                                      America Study can keep track of those who use 
                                      their data.
                                      
                           You can access the same data but including identifiers
                           (which allows you to merge the data to any other wave in
                           the UAS) by setting up an account with the UAS at
                           uasdata.usc.edu
                           
   cps_ASEC2016.dat     -- CPS abstract with basic demographics obtained from 
                           the IPUMScps (http://cps.ipums.org/cps/)                           Year: 2016 Annual Social and Economic Supplement
                           Age selection: 18+   SurveyInstrument.pdf -- A description (including survey logic) of the survey instrument
                           It also describes the questions used to construct the 
                           cognition index
   CodebookUAS49.pdf    -- A codebook describing all the variables in UAS49_WithoutID                       
 
   

2. The Stata program annuityanalyses.do produces the following output:
   annuityanalyses.log  -- Log file with the output for all the tables.
                           To search for a table, search for "Table #" for 
                                normal tables or "Table A##" for appendix tables
                           To search for a figure, search for "Figure #" for 
                                normal figures or "Figure A#" for appendix figures
                           To serach for a text claim, search "Text Claim ##" 
                                where ## is the determined by the order in which they 
                                appear in the text, or alternatively, simply search on
                                a snipped of the text in the paper than contains an
                                empirical result that is not in the tables.
    
   rawdata_fig1a_midbuy.xls   -- Data for Figure 1, CDF of buy values
   rawdata_fig1b_midsell.xls  -- Data for Figure 1, CDF of sell values
   rawdata_fig2_logdiff.xls   -- Data for Figure 2, CDF of log(sell/buy)
   rawdata_figA1a_midbuy.xls  -- Data for Appendix Figure A1, CDF of buy values
   rawdata_figA1b_midsell.xls -- Data for Appendix Figure A1, CDF of sell values
   rawdata_figA2_spread.xls   -- Data for Appendix Figure A2, CDF of spread
             


3. How to run the program
   Put the annuityanalyses.do, UAS49_WithoutID.dta, and cps_ASEC2016.dat, and set the 
   the do file running from within Stata.


4. Software and platform used
   The program was run using Stata/MP 14.2 for Mac (64-bit Intel, Revision 29 Jan 2018) on 
   a 2015 MacBook Pro with a 3.1 GHz Intel Core i7 processor with 16 GB of RAM running 
   MacOS Mojave version 10.14.6
   
   On this platform, the Stata program takes 9 seconds to run.
      
   The Stata program should run and produce identical results on any platform running
   Stata Version 13.0 or higher.
   